


I'm all too aware how I got here

by lackadaisy_leaf_juice



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Epilogue Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 08:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackadaisy_leaf_juice/pseuds/lackadaisy_leaf_juice
Summary: The game is over, and the kids are settling in on Earth C.Dirk doesn't adjust as well as some of the others.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Dirk Strider, Minor Calliope/Roxy Lalonde - Relationship, Roxy Lalonde & Dirk Strider, minor Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	I'm all too aware how I got here

Dirk Strider was an intense guy, to say the least. He knew this, his friends knew this- hell, anyone that had been around him for more than five minutes did. 

Sometimes this was a good thing. It had served him well as a child who was desperate to stay alive in a world that wanted him dead. But nowadays it just made him feel like something _other_ , something volatile. A too-bright star heading towards imminent collapse and doomed to take those nearest down with it.

Dirk wasn’t even sure what ‘it’ was beyond some innate quality of his that he’d be better off without. The closest he ever came to extinguishing it was when he fell into an especially deep depressive slump, except then everything was snuffed out, not just the parts that made him...Too much.

And he was too much. Dirk wasn’t oblivious; he picked up on it when his friends’ mock exasperation became real in the midst of his self-absorbed rambling, or when they failed to hide their unease at the frenetic way he tackled his projects, especially projects that pertained to them. When he wouldn’t let something go and he could tell they were growing increasingly annoyed, but he couldn’t bring himself to let it drop.

That was the kicker, really. He could tell when he was crossing the line and veering towards overbearing, and yet he still couldn’t stop himself from bulldozing right into it. That, or he didn’t notice until he was already there and there was no going back. 

Some days Dirk marveled that anyone could even stand to be around him. 

He wondered if it was out of pity at this point, or perhaps a sense of obligation. Maybe it was easier to humor him than to attempt cutting ties and risk Dirk’s obsessiveness getting turned towards ‘making things right’, when things had never been right to begin with. At his lowest, he wondered if Roxy would ever have wanted anything to do with him if they hadn’t been each other’s only option on post-apocalyptic Earth. 

The answer didn’t really matter, he supposed. Dirk had already botched things up with Jake so badly that he doubted their relationship could be repaired, and things were strained with Jane in a way he had no idea how to fix. It was only a matter of time until things went sour with Roxy too. 

And now, living on Earth C with their ecto-relatives and the surviving trolls, the potential friend pool had more than doubled. It seemed inevitable that his friends would begin to pull away and distance themselves. Dirk, guiltily, found some relief in that thought. It could be a painless withdrawal for all involved.

When the kids grouped up to figure out the housing situation, he elected to reside on his own in a small, two-bedroom home in the outskirts of the city, surrounded by greenery and with no neighbors in sight. It was at once familiar and alien to him, living alone like this. He relished having his own space and not feeling so keenly self-aware as he did in the presence of others, but at the same time he kept expecting the sound of waves crashing against the walls, the taste of salt in the air, the sticky, humid heat that clung to his skin and clothes. Every time he glanced out a window he felt something akin to whiplash when the landscape wasn’t a wash of grays and blues. 

Dirk never thought he'd find himself missing his shitty childhood home, but it really shouldn’t have been so surprising. He admittedly had a history of longing for things that weren’t good for him.

In a weird way, he missed the danger, too- the urgency that dogged his steps knowing that a fight could be just around the corner. He didn’t know what to do with himself without it. 

Things were finally settling into something close to normalcy, but none of this was _his_ normal 

_Which is a good thing_ , Dirk had to remind himself.

None of the others seemed so bothered by it, after all. Of course, they didn’t seem to feel so purposeless, either.

\-----

It had been a few weeks since arriving on the new Earth and Dirk had given up on Squarewave or Sawtooth showing up. So, in need of something to keep busy, he decided to direct his restless energy towards rebuilding them. Their absence had been gnawing at him, anyway. 

He still had most of their original coding, but the years of experiences that had shaped their neural networks could never be recovered, and he would have to build their chassis from scratch. The designs were revised to address a few structural weaknesses he hadn’t known to avoid as a child, and also to account for what building materials were available, but for the most part he left them the same. The code itself was completely untouched, glaring flaws in Squarewave’s learning algorithms and all. It would’ve felt wrong to change it now.

Roxy texted at least once a day while Dirk was holed up in his makeshift workshop, even if just to send a picture of her making a silly face, or once, a candid shot of Callie sneezing overlaid with the word ‘citie!’. Dirk could only assume she’d meant to say ‘cutie’. It seemed unlikely that she had intended to compare her maybe-girlfriend to a largely populated settlement. 

To Dirk’s utter surprise, Jane messaged him too one morning and they had a short, stilted conversation about nothing in particular. She hadn’t reached out since then, but to be fair, neither had Dirk, so he didn’t hold it against her.

Jake hadn’t made any contact at all. He didn’t blame him for that, either.

Dirk tried not to think about how long it had been since he had seen any of them.

It took about a week to construct Sawtooth and get him operational, and it took some more trial and error on top of that to get him running smoothly. His balance wasn’t quite right at first due to the increased density of the alloy plating his chest and limbs. Once adjustments had been made to compensate, the robot still had to be subjected to a series of controlled exercises to relearn basic movements. It was weird to see Sawtooth staggering around, essentially an infant, and Dirk felt a pang of mourning for the Sawtooth he’d grown up with and consequently left behind. It was silly, maybe, to mourn for something he himself had created, but for a long time that had been the closest approximation to human contact Dirk had.

Eventually he felt confident enough in Sawtooth’s autonomy to leave him alone and work on Squarewave. He expected it to be a less daunting endeavor, with the bot’s smaller size and, well, lower complexity. 

About three days in, however, Dirk was painting the already-completed chassis and he just couldn’t quite mix the right shade of blue. He wasn't sure where his phone was or of the time. The lack of light coming in from outside suggested it was late. His eyes burned from overuse and his thoughts were becoming more and more jumbled the longer he put off sleep, but he was so close. He thought he’d finally gotten it with this last mixture, except now that the fresh layer of paint was drying he could see that it was still off, his head buzzing with the sense of _wrong, wrong, wrong._

The next attempt was even worse, too bright and not enough reducer mixed in, so the paint didn’t flow right. With a frustrated growl Dirk let the spray gun drop to the floor with an unceremonious clatter. He numbly observed that his hands were shaking at his sides.

“Fuck,” he tried to mutter, but it came out more like a croak. His throat was dry, and he wasn’t sure when the last time he actually spoke aloud was. He wasn’t sure that he cared.

Staring at the nearly completed Squarewave, an uneven patch of ( _wrong)_ blue on one shoe glared out at him mockingly. Actually, the more Dirk peered at the lifeless bot, the more flaws his flickering eyes zeroed in on. He wasn’t sure this was recoverable. He would need to start over from the beginning if he wanted to get it right. At least he could break this attempt down and reuse parts where he could, and the rest could be used for scrap.

Sinking to his knees, Dirk dragged the machination into his lap, and with uncharacteristically clumsy fingers he began to take it apart.


End file.
